A Mountain Top Just Got Leveled To Make Way For A Giant Telescope

Artist's rendering of the
future telescope which will be the 'largest eye on the
sky.'ESO/L.
Calçada

On June 19, the top of Cerro Armazones,
a 10,000-foot mountain in northern Chile's Atacama Desert, was
blown up to make way for the European Extremely Large Telescope,
or E-ELT. While the prospect of an explosion elicited quite a
buzz from twitter, the event proved anticlimactic, resulting in a
measly puff of smoke.

Still the E-ELT sounds pretty cool. The telescope's main mirror
will measure almost 130 feet, making it the biggest
optical/near-infrared telescope in the world, according to the European Southern Observatory
(ESO). In a statement, officials called it the "world's biggest
eye on the sky."

The location of Cerro
Armazones, where the European Extremely Large Telescope will be
built.Google
Maps

The mission of the telescope will be to "tackle some of the
biggest scientific challenges of our time," ESO said. It
will do this by "allowing detailed studies of subjects including
planets around other stars, the first objects in the Universe,
super-massive black holes, and the nature and distribution of the
dark matter and dark energy which dominate the Universe."

The first use of the telescope is set to take place in the early
2020s.